QuickBooks 2013 For Dummies

Is This a Game You Want to Play?

If you created a good, workable Chart of Accounts, as briefly discussed in Chapter 2, you’re halfway to a good, solid budget. (In fact, for 99 out of 100 businesses, the only step left is to specify how much you earn in each income account and how much you spend in each expense account.)

Does every business need a budget? No, of course not. Maybe you have a simple financial plan that you can monitor some other way. Maybe in your business, you make money so effortlessly that you don’t need to plan your income and outgo. Maybe Elvis Presley really is still alive and living somewhere in the Midwest.

For everyone else, though, a budget improves your chances of getting your business wherever you want it to go financially. It gives you a way to “plan your work and work your plan.” In fact, I’ll stop calling it a “budget” because that word has such negative connotations. I know — I’ll call it The Secret Plan.